Emerging Web Technologies, Facing the Future of Education

Workshop topic and themes

The Net Generation, Y Generation, C Generation, digital natives...
there are many terms – several controversial - used to name youth who
were born into a world where the Internet is of great importance. These
terms issue from a huge body of studies that focus on youth and digital
culture (CEFRIO, 2011; Ito et al., 2008; Lenhart et al., 2008), on the
emerging knowledge society (UNESCO 2005) and that illustrate a wide
consensus on how new media are altering the way youth learn and
socialize. They demonstrate that teachers face a new audience engaged
in tagging, searching, gaming, multitasking, social networking and
collaborating through Web 2.0-related activities. Indeed, youth appear
more engaged in digital networks where they can create content, share
knowledge and expertise, access cultural artefacts or remix existing
material, realizing the Papert’s prophecy (1980).

Emerging Web technologies clearly offer new opportunities to
learners but there are surprisingly few examples of such uses at school
and little evidence of their impact in education. Although teachers
are not entirely out of this movement as a growing number of them are
engaged in online networks that foster professional development and
where they share “living” teaching resources (Gueudet et al. 2011) and
best practices, most schools are still focused on training autonomous
problem-solvers whereas there is a growing need for creativity,
teamwork and collaboration skills within multidisciplinary networks in
order to solve the kind of problems faced by an increasingly complex
world. Thus, there is a growing gap separating youth digital culture
from mainstream academic school culture.

In line with the www2012 conference, this workshop aims at
understanding the real impact of emerging Web technologies in
transforming education. It will offer researchers and practicioners the
opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise in putting forward
new models of teaching and learning in the Internet Age. The aim is to
bridge the gap between youth digital culture and school culture in
order to face the new and complex challenges being addressed by
educators in the knowledge society. The workshop will be complementary
to LiLe 2012.

Papers focusing on concrete applications of emerging Web
technologies are particularly welcome, as well as more theoretical and
position position papers with a special focus on introducing social
media in education.

Chairs

Vladan Devedzic, FOS - School of Business Administration, University of Belgrade, Serbia

Vladan Devedzic is a Professor of Computer Science with the Department of Software Engineering, FON - School of Business Administration, University of Belgrade. His current professional and research interests include knowledge modeling, software engineering, and application of artificial intelligence to education. He is a member of the International Society for Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED). So far, he has published about 320 research papers, both at prestigeous research journals and at international conferences, and 3 monographs for Springer. He has organized and chaired one workshop at an international conference himself (Workshop on Intelligence and Technology in Educational Applications, ITEA 2002, Innsbruck, Austria, February 2002), ad has been a program co-chair at three other international conferences/workshops (International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, ITS 2004 (30 August-03 September 2004, Maceió-Alagoas, Brazil), Workshop on Applications of Semantic Web Technologies for Web-based ITS, SW-EL'04: Semantic Web for E-Learning, August 30, 2004; Intelligence and Technology in Educational Applications 2004, Special Session at the Eighth International Conference on Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information & Engineering Systems (KES2004), Wellington, New Zealand, September 2004; 3rd IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2003), Athens, Greece, July 9-11, 2003).

Denis Gillet leads the React interdisciplinary research Group at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). His research interests include Technologies Enhanced Learning (TEL), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Engineering Education, as well as Coordination of Distributed Systems. His current research focus is on personal learning environments and contextual recommender systems, with applications to on-line engineering education and knowledge management. Dr. Gillet is an Executive of the STELLAR European Network of Excellence on Technology Enhanced Learning. He has also a leading position in the ROLE European Integrated Project on Responsive Open Learning Environments. Dr. Gillet is Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technoloigies (TLT) and of the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning. He was Programme Chair of the last European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL'11).

Eric Sanchez is Associate Professor, head of EducTice, a research team of the French Institute for Education (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon). He is also adjunct Professor at the University of Sherbrooke (Canada). His research relates to the use of ICT for educational purposes (simulation, serious games and elearning). He teaches the educational uses of ICT in teachers training programs (Universities of Lyon, Montpellier and Sherbrooke). He is member of different researchers associations (IFIP, ATIEF, ACFAS) and expert for the European Commission (KA3 ICT LLP).

He has published many papers in research journals and international conferences and has been involved in many conference program and organization committees (IIGWE 2011 Monbasa,Kenya, EIAH 2011, Mons, Belgium, ESERA 2011, Lyon, Serious Game Worshop ACFAS 2011 for the last year)